


A Study in Lack

by popsicletheduck



Category: The Witcher (TV)
Genre: ADHD Jaskier, Character Study, Gen, Implied/Referenced Violence, listen sometimes you just gotta write vaguely poetic nonsense about your faves, no beta chaos is the same as it's always been
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-19
Updated: 2020-01-19
Packaged: 2021-02-19 15:02:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 768
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22312888
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/popsicletheduck/pseuds/popsicletheduck
Summary: It’s fascinating, what one can learn to live without.It’s interesting, how they fit together, never filling the empty space but learning to work around it.
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia & Jaskier | Dandelion
Comments: 6
Kudos: 71





	A Study in Lack

They say he’s heartless, emotionless, cold and empty and cruel. They curse at him, spit at him, mock him for the processes that made him who he is, that stripped him of his humanity, that made him something else, something other. Detached and distant. That stole his heart.

It beats four times slower than an ordinary man. But Geralt's heart still beats.

He's never tried to correct them. Some days he even tells himself that they're right. He doesn't feel. He doesn't want to feel.

There's a difference there.

What's the use of feelings that just got in your way? What's the use of a heart if all it did was break?

He's seen so much of the world. Too much of the world, and rarely it's bright and beautiful parts. The monsters are some of it, fang and claw and bloodlust, but monsters are what they are. Humans...

They fight and they kill because they can, because they enjoy making others hurt. They steal power to lord it over others, they seek revenge for imagined slights, they leave bodies in their wake over broken hearts.

They hate him for what they say he doesn't have, and some days he hates them for what they do.

He cannot feel, he cannot let himself feel for every tragedy he comes too late to stop, for every bloody corpse he couldn't save, for every weeping mother and glassy eyed father. He cannot let himself feel every poisoned, bitter word thrown his way, every whipcracked insult, every nasty joke and curled sneer and thrown fist.

It's fascinating, what you can learn to live without.

Geralt of Rivia is heartless, and it's a far simpler road he walks. Geralt of Rivia is heartless, and he doesn't mourn the lack.

They say he's brainless, emptyheaded, stupid and flighty and daft. They laugh at him, and he can feel the difference, when they're laughing at him instead of with him. It's all they expect of him, music and voice and bright flashy things, and he smiles and performs and shows them what they want.

Jaskier's brain leaps oddly, but it's still there.

It's not underestimation, it's expectations he never quite fit. His tongue never stops running, thoughts tripping and stumbling out of his mouth without control. The songs never stop playing, looping through repeats in his mind until that's all he knows.

Feverish passion that drives him for days, forgetting to eat, to bathe, to sleep because all he knows is what's in front of him, all he can do is what's in front of him. He runs because he can't slow down enough to walk, he shouts because he can't speak quietly enough to talk.

He doesn't understand other people, doesn't understand how they avoid the lure of something new, how they can stay in one place without promise of adventure, of fresh experience.

What's the use of a brain when all it did was slow you down?

He leaps and he doesn't look, he listens and he doesn't hear, he smiles because it's what he knows how to do.

He doesn't let himself think, doesn't let himself stop and consider measly things like consequences, doesn't let himself ponder on intentions and barbed ends hidden under simple statements. He's handsome and talented and clever and people like him. Even if it doesn't sound like they do.

It's fascinating, what you can learn to live without.

Jaskier is brainless, and it's a far more pleasant road he walks. Jaskier is brainless, and he doesn't mourn the lack.

It's not a seamless joining. They don't fit together naturally or comfortably or sometimes even at all. They don't fill each others empty places. They don't fix what's missing. There is no completion, no wholeness, no one made out of two.

And yet.

It's interesting, how they fit together, never filling the empty space but learning to work around it.

Geralt is heartless and Jaskier is brainless and the parts of one do not make the other. They don't need to. Long years of survival have left them lacking in ways they are long since comfortable with.

The empty spaces don't close, but the edges do shift, hard lines wavering to accommodate the other. A fond glance. A consideration of the future. An acceptance of emptiness that isn't their own but sometimes walks perilously close to it.

It's interesting, how they fit together, and it's terrible, how they break apart, empty spaces clashing and grating and shattering even further.

It's fascinating, what you can learn to live without.

It's horrible, what you can learn to live with.


End file.
